Hello, First things first, I never post & this will likely be my only post this season. Call me a dreamer but what if, EA partnered with LG & integrated the league platform into future NHL games? Imagine having a LG menu option where you can login with your LG account & you can click on any of the teams/players & watch the players last 5 games for scouting purposes. Imagine not having to do stats at all because it would be all automated. I could see this growing the league & being huge for ESHL because you could pay for the season via the PSN store potentially. I'm just curious, do you guys think that the community would prosper or fail if this were to ever happen? Random thought of the year ^ Thx, -Scope.
I mean, this isn't out of the realm of possibility. It doesn't exactly work the way you've described but look at what's being done with 2KLeague. Custom jerseys, team licensing, in-game tryouts, all sorts of cool stuff. I just really don't think the product is good enough yet to push for that. I think it's closer than a lot of people think, but it's not there yet.
No offense to LG and other various leagues but this is what EA should have done themselves progressively with each iteration of the game since EASHL was launched back in 09. Honestly I thought back then that this would be the future, and that EASHL would be an acutual league not the silly watered down game mode it turned into.
Personally I think eashl is fine the way it is. I remember back in the days where every stat was done manually back in vhl. I had so many issues with that I actually got suspended because I kept giving my goalie more saves on accident. Then picture stats came along and helped things a little bit in new gen. I also remember back in the days doing afternoon legend 3 boost lobbies and buying skate slot for speed +7 boosts. Now stats are done in 2 seconds and there is no more grinding or paying ea for a good build. LG has done a wonderful job integrating what EA provides. The only issue now is game mechanics, which even then is quite subjective. None of u may remember but back in old gen you could force passes and more than 50% would go through. You could hold on to the puck forever by protecting the puck with body positioning. Back then the game was all about puck control and offensive playmaking. Now the game is about moving the puck quick, turds, and playing sound defense/trapping. Forced passes very rarely go through and you can’t hold on to the puck for very long because of bumps and incidental contact. Asking if the game has improved will result in different answers depending on who you ask. Many people are purely unhappy with how the game is no matter what, which is understandable. No game is perfect and there’s always something to nitpick at. The sad truth is nhl is just not a popular game. 6s even less so. It is unfair to expect people to invest money/time in something that isn’t expected to generate much revenue or profit. Final thoughts on my rant - EA should make east/west games play on central servers and needs to fix the DR errors. I don’t need my LG account in the game menus because it’ll probably not work anyway
It doesn't make sense to EA because: EASHL/WoC players make up a very small slice of the overall NHL player base (which is, optimistically, ~500,000 total, globally across both consoles) The percentage of players who play "competitive" EASHL/6s is even smaller. Even if 10,000 people played competitively (which I think is too high of an estimate based on population of LG and other leagues), that's still 2% of the overall player base. For the amount of development cycles it would take to integrate something like LG's platform into EASHL (or build it out from scratch), and given the size of the player base that would benefit from such work, it's extremely unlikely to be something in which EA would ever invest. Even if EA were to go as far as to acquire LG's platform, the integration effort alone probably isn't worth it enough to them. The status quo of LG using the API to pull stats from NHL is seen as good enough. Sports games like NHL operate on an extremely tight deadline. Production on the next year's iteration begins pretty much immediately from the launch of the current year's title (and likely even a bit before, since the current year's game is certified for production and changes are frozen a few weeks before it ships). Development efforts are focused on the things that are going to generate the most excitement among the overall player base. Unfortunately for us, the things that we care about are unlikely to be prioritized over other new features and ideas that satisfy larger segments of players. One thing that people should be optimistic about is that the barrier to game development, both in terms of money and expertise needed, is being lowered every year as new tools and platforms become available. In the next few years, I could see an independent game company (possibly born out of people from this community) creating an NHL-unlicensed, 6s-focused hockey game and releasing that on Steam or some other channel. It wouldn't have fancy NBC graphics or NHL players/teams/uniforms, but it wouldn't need those things, either. The game would likely never be a AAA title that sells millions of copies, but executed well, it would put a lot more control into the 6s community's hands, lead to a better game experience over time than what EA cares to provide, and likely make enough of a steady profit to sustain itself for as long as the 6s community exists. --- EDIT: On the off chance that you're reading this and you actually are interested in game development, or what taking on this kind of project would look like, drop me a line. I'm too busy with my career to go full-time on something like this, but it's definitely doable and I can give you some pointers and help.
